Finding the best gyokuro can be difficult, especially when you don’t know exactly what to look for. In this article, we are going to teach you everything you need to know to find the best gyokuro, and we’ll also show you where to find the best gyokuro tea online.
We’ll show you how to spot the best gyokuro green tea, and explore the different regions, flavors and cultivars you should be looking for.
Let’s get started! 🥇
What to Look for in the Best Gyokuro Tea
Before you even look for the best gyokuro, there are a few things that are important to keep in mind. First, we should define what gyokuro is and how it's made. If you understand all the work that goes into producing the best gyokuro tea, you will understand how the quality varies so widely between gyokuro teas.
What Is Gyokuro Tea?
If you’re looking for the best green tea gyokuro is a strong candidate. It was once the tea of choice for the emperor, and this is why you will often see it sold as “imperial gyokuro.” Gyokuro is thought to maintain, or even improve, its flavor with age, so it’s no surprise that it was in high demand in a time before refrigeration.
So is gyokuro the best green tea? It’s certainly the most revered tea in Japan, thanks to this powerful sweet and umami flavor that’s rare in the world of tea. In fact, when discussing the flavor of gyokuro tea, we often find it more useful to compare it to foods rather than other teas.
Focus on the Farmers
If you are looking for the best brands for gyokuro green tea, you should instead be looking for the best farmers for gyokuro tea. Brands like to keep these farmers a secret, rather than giving their names away to customers and competitors.
Price
When it comes to price, it should be fair but not too low. Gyokuro tea requires quite a bit of labor to produce, so you should expect to pay over 30 cents per gram. Don't worry, this only comes out to around $1 per cup, which is not bad considering the tea is such an indulgence.
If you're interested in this topic, we invite you to read our article 👉 Why is the Gyokuro Tea Price so High?
Flavor Profile Description of the Teas
What does Gyokuro taste like? When you look at the flavor profile description of the tea, it should be clear that the seller understands the purpose of Gyokuro, which is to capture these sweet and savory (umami) flavors. The mark of the best gyokuro tea is how well it can capture this taste.
Appearance of the Gyokuro
The best gyokuro leaves should be dark, almost black in color. This shows you that the tea has gone through a proper shading process and the L-theanine content is high.
According to gyokuro best practices, the leaves should be tightly rolled into needle shapes, indicating that the tea has been through its full production process. To produce these tight needle shapes, the tea needs to go through an additional rolling phase, which requires additional machinery. If the producer is serious about making the best gyokuro tea, they will make the investment into the right equipment.
Cultivar
Just like wine is broken down into varietals, tea is broken down into cultivars. Each one of these produces a different flavor, so which is the best Japanese gyokuro tea cultivar? Saemidori is considered the top for sweet gyokuro teas, but Gokou and Okumidori can produce a strong savory flavor, so it’s a matter of personal preference.
Best Gyokuro Brand
We believe that asking for the best gyokuro brand is the wrong question.
This is because brands don’t produce green tea, farmers do.
At Nio, we are proud to do things a bit differently.
We’ll tell you exactly where your tea was produced, and who it was produced by. We believe it is important to know where your foods and drinks are coming from, and we are willing to “give away our secrets” for the sake of transparency.
Do you want to know who is the best Japanese gyokuro farmer? This answer is right below 👇
Then, Who Is the Best Gyokuro Farmer from Japan?
After traveling all over Japan for many years, we can proudly say that we found the best organic gyokuro farmer in the world, the legendary tea farmer, Mr. Sakamoto.
This farmer is selling his gyokuro to dozens of tea brands all over the world! So we can proudly say that we're part of the best gyokuro tea brand in the world.
Best Organic Gyokuro Tea
When it comes to green tea, it is very important to buy from a source that does not use chemicals or pesticides during production. Although the leaves are washed off, there is always a higher chance of cross-contamination the closer chemicals are to the tea being produced.
If you’re looking for the best organic gyokuro tea, it may be hard to find. The reason for this is that the 3-week shading process can be a stressful time for the plant, and most farmers rely on chemical fertilizers to keep the plants alive. To produce flavorful gyokuro without these chemicals requires a lot of skill, and there are only a few farmers who can do it.
Mr. Sakamoto
Mr. Sakamoto has been producing gyokuro without the use of pesticides or chemicals since 1985, and during that time he has developed his own blend of organic fertilizer that allows him to grow strong, healthy and flavorful tea plants without harming the natural ecosystem.
In a way, you could consider him to be the best gyokuro brand, even though he and his family just represent one small farm. He produces the best organic gyokuro, and you can find his masterpieces in our gyokuro collection.
If you’re interested in learning about the best gyokuro from the master himself, you can read our article 👉 What’s the Best Gyokuro in the World?
Best Gyokuro of 2025? Find the 5 Best Gyokuro Teas
Best Region for Gyokuro
#1 Yame
Yame is a town in Fukuoka that is without a doubt known as the best gyokuro region. If you were to ask anyone in the tea industry which place has the reputation for being the best gyokuro region, Yame would come up time and time again.
This is due to the fact that during the annual gyokuro competition, a majority of the highest-scoring teas are all from Yame.
#2 Uji
Uji may not be known as the best gyokuro region, but it is known as the best matcha region. Uji has a long history of green tea production in Japan. The original place where Japanese green tea was cultivated is not too far from Uji, located around Kozanji Temple in the Toganoo mountains outside of Kyoto.
Soon, tea production migrated south to Uji, which became the hotbed of tea cultivation and innovation for the next few hundred years. Gyokuro was actually first discovered in Uji, in the small town of Ogura.
Uji is even more famous for the production of matcha. If you want to learn more about the history of matcha in Uji, you should read this article here 👉 What is Uji Matcha and Why is it the Most Famous Tea?
#3 Kagoshima
The final candidate for best gyokuro region is one we are a bit partial to, and that is Kagoshima. Kagoshima is the second-largest tea-growing region in Japan, and it benefits greatly from rich, fertile soil and mild subtropical climates.
This region is underrated in the world of tea, so the prices here are much lower than in the two famous tea regions of Uji and Yame. If you want to find the best gyokuro at a fair price, Kagoshima is the way to go.
Where to Buy the Best Gyokuro Tea Online
The best place to buy gyokuro is actually online, as very few physical stores in the US and Europe offer this rare tea. When you buy gyokuro tea from Nio, you will be getting it from the farmer, Mr. Sakamoto.
Mr. Sakamoto produces by far the best gyokuro green tea we have had, and you can browse his selection and get free shipping worldwide here.
